


Tasting the Winds

by Hedge_witch, Vana



Series: Gathering Seashells on the Event Horizon: A Stavos Collection [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Finger Sucking, Fingers getting cut off, Isn't that fun!?, M/M, Stannis has an oral fixation, This has been a joint production.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedge_witch/pseuds/Hedge_witch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another fill for the LJ meme, in which the request was, "Davos/Stannis: After the siege but before the maiming; fingersucking." We can do that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tasting the Winds

Davos lingered in Stannis' rooms and watched through the window as the sun grew white and passed behind the clouds, the sea turning sullen in its absence. After the events of the morning, when he had been brought here to argue for his life and had gained it, with land and honours he had never dreamed of into the bargain, he felt heavy, listless, a sail without wind to fill it. Behind him Stannis paced short measures through the room, issuing orders and conversing with his bannermen, with a sharp word and a scowl for all who came. He spoke no further word to Davos, considering the scouring questioning he had weathered earlier that day sufficient. The knights who passed through followed his lead and barely spared Davos a glance, eyes passing dismissively over salt-stained grey and brown. He could not suppress a wry smile as he thought on how their eyes would widen and their lips would curl when he took his place among them on the following day.

This brief flash of levity passed like dim light on water and Davos' face grew grim once more as he huddled closer to the window, catching a breath of wind on his face. Yes, he too would be a knight, but at a heavy price. He glanced uneasily down at the people passing to and fro below the walls of the keep, somewhere his crew would be readying the Bertha, waiting on his word to slip away.

There was no chance of that now, Stannis was no light-handed lord and he would hold his hawsers tight. Davos would give his crew a chance to go, if they so wished, but those who remained with him would never again sail with the same freedom. 

And Davos would carry the mark of it on his body, or rather, in the loss of a part of it. He lifted his left hand to the light and considered it, its brown and battered skin, the callused lines on the edge of his fingertips whole for the last time. Stannis could not have known it but it had always been Davos' habit to leave his right hand on rope or wheel, wetting the fingers of his left and raising them, testing for a change in the wind.

It was a small thing really, though it might not seem so on the morrow when flesh was split and bone was cleaved, but Davos had long ago learned the art of tossing cargo overboard so that he might weather the storm. He smiled and brought his middle and index fingers down to his mouth, taking them in and laving them with his tongue, tasting the salt and a bitter flake of tar beneath his fingernail. He closed his eyes and slipped them from between his lips, stretching his hand out of the window and feeling the cool air lap against them for the last time. 

Feeling the light change on his face Davos shivered and opened his eyes; clouds had swept, ever grimmer, across the sky and he could feel the skin on the back of his neck tighten. He was being watched. He turned, and started when he saw Stannis, standing bare inches from his back. 

Stannis' face was pale and set, his thin mouth a rigid line, but his eyes were unmoored, flickering between Davos' fingers, still outstretched, and his mouth. 

Davos felt something within him reel, as though he stood on a tilting deck, and he must have drawn in a breath too harshly for Stannis' eyes stuttered, before fixing back on Davos' face as though he were trying to see through the skin. 

"What," he said, his voice carrying a brittle sort of anger, below which something stranger seethed, "are you doing?"

"Testing the winds," Davos said.

\--

Stannis was dimly aware that he stood gaping like a fish or a fool, his mouth half-open in unconscious imitation of Davos’ parted lips, but he could not bring himself to care or to try to become composed. All he could focus on, besides the man who stood before him, was the dull pulsing ache somewhere deep within him, spreading like fire through his body. He could hear his own ragged breathing through dry lips and the pounding in his chest and head. And he watched like a starved man, once more standing against the burden of death, with only Davos between himself and the abyss of the unknown. Only this time, Davos was the abyss, and he was also the only one who could hold Stannis back from it. Stannis held fast to his dignity.

"Planning to slip away after all, smuggler?" The sting of sure betrayal crept up into his chest and throat, infusing his voice with something he knew was hurtful. And good. It was meant to be a warning.

But he hadn't expected the shock he saw in Davos' eyes, a flash of pain Stannis knew he had never intended, would never intend to cause -- not here, not to this man. Even if he had meant to escape. An unfamiliar sort of shame flooded him and mixed with the heat in his blood. 

He took Davos' hand in a sudden crushing grip; he heard the quick surprised intake of breath as he touched his tongue to the tip of a finger before drawing it back. "These are mine now, or have you forgotten?" Davos was clearly unable to answer and Stannis took a savage pleasure in this. "And you sail for me now, so you will test the winds at my behest and mine alone." As if to punctuate this, to test the loyalty of his newest liege man -- and also to try to sate some of his own desperate need -- he took one of the doomed fingers in his mouth, as Davos had done but more slowly; his lips closed over it. Davos' hand was damp with sweat and it mixed with the deep-sea taste of salt and what he imagined to be Davos' own saliva. The thought of this caused him to tense up unconsciously -- his jaw clenched and he felt Davos' skin give under his teeth. 

He didn't know he had closed his eyes until he opened them again to see Davos almost sway before him, unsteady. He locked his gaze with Davos' widened eyes and drew another finger between his lips, feeling Davos' pulse jump beneath the skin and wondering if it was with fear, disgust or something else, but it didn't really matter as he traced the ragged fingernail with his tongue, letting his eyes fall closed again.

\--

“Testing the winds.”

Davos did not know why his answer made Stannis’ face shiver closed and then re-form, settling uneasily into suspicion, but with something like desperation eddying beneath. His jaw was fixed and he was almost panting, the sound of it rasping through the grey, quiet chamber and Davos felt his own breaths speed up in sympathy, until there was only warm shared air between them. 

When had Stannis moved so close? He blocked everything else from sight, not that Davos could have looked away from his eyes, which had at once widened and sharpened to a single point of focus. Davos shuddered, feeling the saliva cool upon his lips. He did not know this man. Oh, he knew of his ability to endure, his determination to command, even a little of his loneliness as he sat in his meagre chambers and bade people enter and leave, their passing dictated purely by the stark demands of necessity. But the person before him now, whose fists were clenched and whose turmoil spread out from him like a black and deadly undertow, he was a stranger, and gods, Davos had given him his ship, his crew, his very  _hands._  

Dimly, Davos heard Stannis’ voice, bitter with accusation, and it served to compound his fear. He was not trusted, and being so, how could he trust in return? But the worst of it was that low coiling thing, a beast that had quickened and burnt, even as Davos had first seen him; gaunt but still taut with control, walking a measured pace down the steps to the harbour while his men trembled on the edge of desperate flight towards Davos‘ ship and the cargo it contained. What must he do? What could he give this man; one among a thousand, to have his hand sure upon his shoulder and his voice warm in his ear? 

Stannis darted forward quickly and Davos had no time to suppress his gasp of pain as his hand was crushed in Stannis’ grip. But it was Stannis’ hand now, Davos thought wildly, it would do as he willed. And there was a moment, when Stannis held it sharp down between them, hovering by his hip bone, that Davos felt his heart stutter as he thought, “Oh, surely he wouldn’t...?” But no. Instead, Stannis yanked it up towards his face, the force of it pulling Davos even closer, near enough to see the juddering pulse beneath the thin skin of his neck and the faint scabs upon his lips where he had bitten them. 

Then there was nothing but a shock that whirled upwards through Davos and almost cost him his footing as Stannis carefully took his index finger and placed it against his mouth. His lips were dry and rough, but there was the briefest hint of warmth when Stannis pressed his tongue quickly, almost delicately against the tip and Davos  _shuddered_  with it. Stannis spoke again, his voice firm, leashed back sharply as he reminded Davos of his place. But Davos could not speak, could not even summon the wherewithal to affirm it, and then Stannis was taking his finger into his mouth, closing about it with lips and testing,  _savouring_  tongue. 

There was no escaping it now, Davos was hard, every inch of his skin aching in sympathy with his caressed, tortured finger. Davos fought down a groan, but could not disguise the way he shuddered ever closer as Stannis bit down, sharply, savagely. There was the barest film of air between them now and gods, no, Stannis’ eyes had closed and though his face was not soft, never that, without the hard gaze upon him Davos might almost believe that he was taking pleasure from this. It was too much, and when Stannis ran his tongue delicately over Davos’ fingernail, then swallowed it down to the knuckle and  _sucked_ , Davos’ hips snapped forward and he was moaning like some back alley whore as his liege lord ran the edge of his teeth along his finger one final time before letting it slip from his mouth. 

Davos felt the heat flood to his cheeks, for surely now Stannis would know that he would give him even this, worse, he would do it gladly, would surrender his sweat and his skin without reserve, without simple pride. He dragged his eyes back up, in time to catch the barest flash of covetousness warming Stannis’ features before he composed them once more. Davos swallowed dryly, his fingers still damp and splayed, shivering at the thought that this might be something that Stannis had a mind to take. 

\--

Stannis hadn’t expected rebellion. He knew when he said it -- “These are mine now” -- that Davos would not fight it, would not fight him. He knew he was asserting something, sealing something around them with his breath and his dry bitten lips. There were many things he knew, many he expected. 

But he never expected Davos to seem to melt toward him as he did when Stannis had caressed finger with tongue. He never expected the fevered expression in the mild brown eyes when he allowed himself to look into them. He could not have imagined the shiver that shook Davos’ body to the core -- and the way his own body would instantly respond, so immediately as if they had been pressed together, clothes and cloaks discarded and skin laying unhindered on skin. 

And this would happen, _now_ , if he did not stop it. It was as inevitable as the tide. But Stannis could not give in -- whether to himself or to Davos he did not and could not know. Frustration clawed at him from his pounding heart outward. His own duty seemed very far away, but he heard its padding footsteps, coming closer. _This must end_ , it said. He set his jaw, sliding Davos’ finger between his teeth, catching them on the callouses softened by the wetness and watching through nearly-closed eyes as Davos twitched forward, toward him, almost to him now.

“Oh--” Davos seemed to say, a small sound really, a breath or a sigh. A sudden flush suffused the skin on his neck and face, yet another thing Stannis felt he could not resist now that he knew the taste that would await him -- and Stannis, nearly overcome, forced himself to turn away. The next time he would hold those fingers in his grasp there would be ripping and raw bone and an oath sanctified with blood.

Years later, he sometimes could not remember whether the sound Davos made that tore through his dreams was a barely suppressed moan of pleasure, or the choked cry he let out when the blade fell.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Tasting the Winds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2064699) by [Hedge_witch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedge_witch/pseuds/Hedge_witch), [Vana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana)




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